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France bars London-based artwork from leaving Paris

France laid claim on Monday to a French baroque painting which it insists was stolen 200 years ago and Paris has barred the London gallery which brought the work to the French capital for an exhibition from taking it back.

France's culture ministry said the picture, "The Carrying of the Cross" painted by Nicolas Tournier around 1632, had been stolen from a museum in the southern city of Toulouse in 1818 and still belonged to the French state.